


my heart is stone and still it trembles

by livj707



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Character Death, Character Study, Suicide, despite having never ventured into the les mis fandom even once, hello les mis fandom, i dug this out of my google docs and decided to post it, olivia is back with the garbage quality character studies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 07:13:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15334623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livj707/pseuds/livj707
Summary: Prisons always seemed to hold a certain type of person.~~~~Alternatively, Javert's thoughts while staring into the river Seine.





	my heart is stone and still it trembles

****_ Who is this man, _

_ What sort of devil is he? _

Prisons always seemed to hold a certain type of person.

Not exactly in age, or personality, or heritage; no, that always seemed to vary. Some men committed crimes driven purely by greed and desire, by the desperate and blinding urge to have something for themselves. It  _ disgusted  _ Javert to think about, the idea that a man could throw away himself, his entire life, for something so selfish...so inhumane.

Some crimes were the result of mistakes. Javert had seen men thrown behind bars for escalated fights that got out of hand, men sentenced to death because they merely stepped out of line. He'd seen the guilt, the desperation, the  _ grief  _ in those men’s eyes. But none of it ever fazed him. It never even came close.

_ To have me caught in his path… _

_ And choose to let me go free? _

Javert lived and breathed and thrived in prisons; he couldn’t forget the empty halls and cold stone walls of a jail, just like he can’t forget the hallowed-out faces of men who rotted away inside them. He knew every law, every rule and guideline that citizens had to follow. He was born in a prison, after all. He grew up alongside hundreds,  _ thousands  _ of different men.

Some had families.

Some didn't.

So different, and yet,  _ all the same. _

Because, as far as Javert was concerned, they all possessed a certain evil. It lurked beneath even the most innocent men, burrowing itself inside their skin, suffocating their minds with  _ greed  _ and  _ apathy  _ and  _ darkness. _

He saw truly evil men.

And Jean Valjean was not an evil man.

The police inspector walked alongside the tattered, dirty bridge, black in the dusty mask of night. It was in this cold darkness that he was able to see the Paris lights, glittering against the dark backdrop of the sky. 

Javert looked at Valjean and saw a man, who, despite breaking the law, was  _ not  _ evil. He looked in his eyes and saw neither greed nor apathy, nor any sort of darkness that deprived him of being any more human than he himself was. 

He saw a man who stole to save a child.

He saw a man who gave up his freedom, sentenced himself to a life of looking over his shoulder at any given moment…to save a child.

He saw a man who would refuse to kill another, even if that same man tried to take his life on countless occasions.

Jean Valjean was a fugitive, but he was no criminal.

_ It was his hour at last to put a seal on my fate _

_ Wipe out the past, and wash me clean off the slate _

Javert thought the world was black and white.

Ever since he was born, it was his mindset; white was the law, the prisons and the outside world. White was him, morality and justice.

Black was the prisoners. It was greed and it was selfishness. It formed the deepest, darkest parts of people, the parts that would gladly end human lives or condemn a family to starvation if it meant being able to grasp some sort of want - some sort of possession.

Javert was so  _ sure _ that Valjean was black.

Had to be.

But how could he think that now? How could he, when it was that same man who taught him that the world was grey?

_ All it would take was a flick of his knife. _

Javert walked along the edge of the bridge, feeling something he’d never felt before; it wasn't forgiveness, nor was it clarity or gratitude. He didn't, as others often put it, “see things in a new light.” He just felt betrayed, like that one belief that he had clung to his entire life had failed him.

_ Vengeance was his, _

_ And he gave me back my life. _

Jean Valjean was not an evil man. He wasn't evil, just like the kids who played in the streets after school hours ended weren't evil. Just like the youthful, bright leaders of Les Amis weren't evil. Like the little Gavroche wasn't evil. 

Jean Valjean broke the law, yes, but he also saved Javert's life, saved him when it was not even deserved. It was a debt that he couldn't ever repay.

Javert paused and let himself stare into the river Seine. 

What was a felon? And what was a felon who showed compassion? Mercy? One who, knife in hand, chose to cut the straps off of another, one who had done nothing but rob him of his freedom? 

Who was Jean Valjean?

_ Innocent. _

Javert took a step onto the ledge, feeling a powerful sweep of fear and uncertainty that alone threatened to push him off the ledge before his guilt did.

He was innocent.

And if Javert arrested him, he would surely be going against God.

And if he let him go, he was going against  _ everything  _ that mattered - or what he thought mattered.

At last, he allowed himself fall off the ledge; the one that, coincidentally, fell right between Pont Notre Dame and Pont au Change. 

Right between Notre Dame cathedral and the Palais de Justice.

Right between God and the Law.


End file.
